Tough Love

by Susan Rice

  When the president travels domestically, he is always accompanied by a senior NSC staffer. Usually, I delegated that responsibility to a trusted colleague, but I made a habit of joining President Obama on Martha’s Vineyard, as I had learned the hard way that bad things often happen in August (e.g., the 1998 embassy bombings). Being new in the job, I also felt obliged to limit my own vacation, so I tried to combine staffing him with family time. Ian and the kids joined me on the Vineyard, and I hoped to be able to work in the mornings and hang with family in the afternoons and evenings. It was a flawed plan, which in future years I did not replicate. Martha’s Vineyard afforded a nice change of scenery, but since I was always on-duty it was no vacation.

  Every morning during the president’s so-called “vacation,” I would get up early to send him a daily briefing memo and often visit or call him from our makeshift, secure NSC office across the island to discuss pressing matters. On August 14, the issue was the Egyptian military systematically slaughtering Morsi supporters in Cairo’s streets. Up to a thousand were killed and thousands wounded by heavy weapons in a horrific display of bloody repression.

  President Obama instructed me to convene his NSC by secure conference call. Outraged by the carnage, he ordered a full review of our assistance to Egypt. In a statement to the press the next day, Obama canceled the upcoming major annual U.S.-Egypt military exercise originally planned for September and set in motion a process that resulted in the suspension of both cash assistance and the delivery of heavy weapons systems, including fighter jets, helicopters, tank kits, and antiship missiles. The president allowed military training and counterterrorism support, as well as education and health programs, to continue.

  Relations between the Obama administration and Sisi’s Egypt never returned fully to normal. Sisi is a strongman, who craves power and crushes dissent. Obama remained distrustful of him and disappointed in his leadership. The president, my fellow White House staffers, Samantha Power, and I were more inclined than State, Defense, and CIA to punish Sisi and the Egyptian military for their myriad abuses, but most of us were also pragmatists who understood we could not afford to sever the relationship. For the remaining years, we sought to strike an awkward balance between demonstrating our discontent and forcing an irreparable breach. I always found this middle ground unsatisfactory but do not think the alternatives—fully breaking with the Egyptian military or failing to hold them at all accountable—were preferable.

  I am not a morning person. Thankfully, neither is President Obama.

  That made life easier than it could have been. Working for President George W. Bush, who reportedly started in the Oval Office before 7 a.m. and ended most days by 5 p.m., might have killed me. By contrast, Obama worked in the residence until late into the night, devouring his briefing materials and decision memos, sometimes calling or emailing with a question or concern. Luckily, I never had to wake him with a “3 a.m. phone call,” because I knew that, if I emailed him even at 2 a.m. or later, he was likely to respond or call me back. Obama rose around 7 a.m., worked out religiously, ate breakfast, read his intelligence materials, and came down to the office usually around 10 a.m. That suited me just fine.

  I woke up to NPR’s Morning Edition—usually around 6 a.m. Most days, I would work out in our small basement gym, reading the newspaper on the elliptical machine while listening to the television. If I could stand it, I turned on Morning Joe. On those many days when their commentary risked raising my blood pressure even before 7 a.m., I would divert to the BBC. After showering and saying goodbye to the kids, I would jump into the Secret Service armored Suburban for the twenty-minute ride to the White House.

  Waiting in the car was my intelligence briefer, the person assigned to hand me my secure iPad, which contained my morning briefing materials, including the very closely held PDB (the President’s Daily Brief), and other items he or she selected for me to read. My briefer was there to answer questions, receive and respond to requests for follow-up information, and occasionally field my praise or criticism about the quality of the day’s product. Not being a morning person, I was not especially talkative. Sometimes I had to make or receive a call, often with John Kerry, on the secure phone in my vehicle. Mainly, I focused on readying myself for the day ahead. Following the White House chief of staff’s morning meeting, I scrambled to prepare for briefing the president—finishing my intelligence take, reading morning briefing notes prepared by the NSC staff, devouring the press, preparing my points for the president, and being armed in case he wanted to discuss any of the memos I sent him the night before.

  Just before 10 a.m., our small NSC team would gather in the lobby outside the Oval. In addition to the president and vice president, the group consisted of: me; the deputy national security advisor (first Tony Blinken, and from January 2015 Avril Haines); Lisa Monaco, the president’s counterterrorism and homeland security advisor; deputy NSA and speechwriter Ben Rhodes; Denis McDonough; and the vice president’s national security advisor (first Jake Sullivan, then Colin Kahl). A senior leader from the office of the Director of National Intelligence would join at the top of the meeting, usually DNI Jim Clapper himself or one of his deputies.

  When we heard the door from the Rose Garden colonnade to the outer Oval slam shut, we knew it was showtime. Obama was in the house. Sometimes Bo, the elder and more mellow of the Obamas’ two large, very soft, white-shoed Portuguese Water Dogs, lounged lazily in a big leather chair to greet him. These meetings began with varying degrees of levity or trepidation, depending on the day. Bo’s cheerful presence meant we collectively started in a better mood as we filed in to the Oval.

  We each always sat in the same place. My spot was on the couch just to the left of the president’s brown leather chair. That put me directly in the line of fire for whatever he was dishing that day—humor, frustration, firm direction, or a diversionary topic such as his perennial quest for a particular type of straw hat from Cuba. Like Ben and Denis, whose wardrobes the president regularly dissected, I occasionally endured a ribbing on things ranging from my shoes to the rationale for the weird holes in my suede jacket with a distinctive angular cut, a unique acquisition from a craft fair. And frequently, without impetus, Obama took the opportunity to remark on how short I am, as if he were noticing for the first time. His fascination with my height (or lack thereof) was a recurrent annoyance in our interactions. For my part, I gave as good as I got, although I confess to commenting approvingly on his notorious tan suit, which I actually welcomed as a respite from navy or gray.

  Amidst all the seriousness and intensity of being in charge of the national security team, we made time for levity. Tony Blinken, my first deputy, was a wonderful colleague and friend who did an excellent job managing the Deputies Committee process with a hokey humor and smooth style that provided a kinder, gentler counterbalance to my own. He kidded me about my colorful language and my occasional feigned threat for someone who was getting on my last nerve to come and “kiss my black ass.” For Christmas our first year, Tony gave me a small package. Inside was an ink stamp with four letters on it: “KMBA.” I howled in laughter. Tony’s advice was that I use it to display in shorthand my disapproval of certain memos that came across my desk.

  A big day in the Obama White House, I would learn, was St. Patrick’s Day, when each year the president would host the Taoiseach, Ireland’s prime minister, in the Oval Office. The meeting was usually a festive affair complete with mandatory, leafy green boutonnieres, and green garb all around. Obama, with his part-Irish heritage, embraced this meeting and the celebration that followed on Capitol Hill. Given his typically excellent taste, I was surprised one St. Patrick’s Day when he walked into the Oval looking his usual dapper self—but something was off. I realized his tie was all wrong. Rather than any discernible version of green, it was teal bluish and flecked with a strange pattern. It wasn’t an ugly tie (but it was nothing special). It just plain as day was not green.

  “Mr. President,” I ventured, “your
tie is not actually green.”

  “What are you talking ’bout Rice? Of course it’s green.”

  “No,” I held it closer to his face, “this is not green. It’s a kind of blue.”

  “Give me a break. This is plenty green,” he insisted.

  I called for backup: “Ferial,” appealing to the president’s assistant, “does this look green to you?”

  “No,” she said, “not really.”

  Pete Souza, the president’s photographer, agreed. Exasperated, Obama trudged back up to the residence and came back wearing a truly green tie. I was both amused and puzzled by this exchange, but when he returned I moved on to the daily briefing.

  The next year, on St. Patrick’s Day, I was taken aback when he came down again in that same bluish, flecked tie. I thought—WTF? With some trepidation, but determined, I started: “Mr. President, don’t you remember we had this same conversation last year? That tie is not green.”

  “Yes it is!” he again insisted.

  “No it’s not. It wasn’t green last year, and it isn’t green this year,” I braved.

  This time, I didn’t need to call for backup. It came swiftly, and the president retreated to the residence only to return again with the same correct green tie. I began to wonder if he was slightly color-blind.

  Most mornings, our meetings began with less contention. And on some days, we just started with a celebration, like on August 4 when I typically led off with a (highly imperfect) rendition of Stevie Wonder’s “Happy Birthday to ya’. Happy Birthday to ya’. Happy Biiirthday…” The first time I sang for his birthday, Obama smiled, turned to Biden and said, “See, that’s what happens when you have a black national security advisor.” After a few laughs and a couple more bars, we got down to work.

  The DNI briefer typically departed after ten or fifteen minutes of fielding the president’s questions. Then it was my turn. For the next half hour or so, I updated, fireproofed, sought guidance, and offered the president whatever insight I thought he might need that day. On my trusty graph paper pad, I kept a daily list of items to raise with the president as well as my “to-do” tracker. My briefing would cover not only high-profile topics like North Korea, Syria, Russia, or China, but also matters of interest and importance ranging from political developments in West Africa to the long-term strategic implications of water scarcity or space technology and threats to undersea cables. After I exhausted my list, or occasionally triaged it because I sensed the president was running out of patience, I handed off to Lisa, Avril, and Ben for matters they wished to raise.

  We didn’t use these meetings to circumvent the Principals Committee process by trying to persuade the Boss of our preferred course before others could weigh in, and he would not have permitted that. But sometimes we did seek a sense of his gut instinct on tough topics in advance of a policy debate, so we would not be surprised, or surprise him, if our approaches were likely to diverge. This morning briefing time was a valuable opportunity to ensure that we stayed closely attuned to the president’s judgment and that he received daily the good, bad, and most often the ugly of what was going on around the world. Thankfully, Obama received bad news as we did—with equanimity rather than excessive emotion. His cool temperament and rationality enabled him to confront tough challenges with his formidable intellect, offering thoughtful direction and asking probing questions rather than shooting the messenger. Because President Obama is a voracious reader with huge capacity to retain information, our time was spent less on simply briefing him and more on collectively assessing the implications of key developments and considering potential paths forward.

  Following the president’s daily briefing, the balance of the day was usually mine to manage—barring a bolt from the blue that screwed everything up, like a terrorist attack, hostage scenario, coup, or threat to U.S. personnel overseas. Often, I chaired a staff meeting after the morning briefing: either a small, internal meeting of my deputies to plan our Principals Committee and Deputies Committee schedule, discuss personnel, or resolve internal differences; or a larger meeting of NSC senior directors representing each of the regional and functional offices—roughly thirty highly skilled, mostly career public servants (diplomats, intelligence analysts, military officers) crammed tightly into the Situation Room. Senior directors would flag issues that they anticipated would require senior-level involvement and sought quick guidance on pressing matters. These sessions enabled me to keep my fingers on the pulse of the staff and be readily accessible to them.

  I devoted the afternoons to meetings with outsiders like visiting foreign counterparts, and to preparing either for NSC meetings with the president or, more often, to run Principals Committee meetings. The PC met roughly two to three times per week for approximately an hour and a half each meeting. The frequency and length of the meetings varied, depending on the topic and the press of events. When the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) was on the march or Ebola raging, when Syria negotiations were intense, or South Sudan was imploding and putting our embassy at risk, we would meet more frequently and sometimes with little advance notice.

  Evenings were the only time available for reviewing and editing the thousands of memos my staff prepared in my name to send to the president. Briefing memos. Information memos. Decision memos. Thick binders of trip preparation materials. The volume of paper that we sent to the president, and which he read thoroughly, was all but overwhelming. Every night and weekend, I spent many hours ensuring that every page sent to the president was of uniformly high quality. A stickler for proper grammar and punctuation, I have a particular pet peeve about proper comma usage. (My chief of staff at USUN had to restrain me, in my own best interest, from giving an all-staff seminar on the comma.) I was not about to send garbage to any president, let alone the former president of the Harvard Law Review.

  Occasionally, the tyranny of paperwork and tedium of the evenings were interrupted by a colleague dropping by before heading downstairs to go home. My favorite unannounced visitor was Vice President Joe Biden, whose office was just down the hall. Unlike President Obama, who rarely ambled into our suite and never without a purpose, the VP liked to pop in with no agenda and linger. He came to check on how we were doing, buck us up, tell a joke, shoot the breeze, or deliver a Bidenism—a family aphorism that never lost its value. In rare instances, the vice president surprised me by baring his soul, sharing his agony over his son Beau’s cancer and later his tragic passing. Even when in pain, Joe Biden was warm and generous, always leaving me feeling better than when he walked in.

  Evenings were when things typically loosened up at the White House. In the absence of a crisis, we had a moment to breathe, to laugh, and tend to the trivial—like the bizarre arrival of a snowy owl just blocks from the White House in McPherson Square. Jake, the avid birder, pinged my cell phone incessantly in January 2014 seeking my help in locating the snowy owl so that he could get a good photograph. My colleague in the front office, Anne Withers, volunteered to track sightings of the owl online for a few days (until it got injured by a Metrobus) so that, despite my work hours, I could still be of some use to my teenage son.

  Rarely would I escape the office before 8 p.m., staying many nights past 10 or 11 to move the paper that had to go to the residence that night or out to the agencies. Avril, who as deputy NSA had the hardest job in government, was much more of a fiend. She almost never left the office before midnight and often much later. I had a small fridge and cabinets, in which I discreetly stocked the necessary provisions, including adequate supplies of beer, wine, and other necessities to keep me, my front office team, and any visitors tolerably disposed well into the night.

  Too often, we ordered snacks or dinner from the White House Mess. By evening, my dietary restraint often lapsed, and I could be tempted by some of the best chicken fingers in the world as well as waffle fries, jalapeño poppers (Avril’s favorite), or cheese and crackers. Being national security advisor, as I like to say, was “bad for my butt.” In fact, it was
worse than the U.N., where Madeleine Albright often quipped, the job is to “eat and drink for your country.” In New York, I was usually able to leave the office in time to snag at least a late dinner at the residence, and there was no Mess. In Washington, I would graze on Mess food and then come home late and eat again with Ian, who had kindly prepared healthy dinners.

  The job also wasn’t good for my blood pressure, though neither was the U.N. When my dad was very ill in 2010, I went to the White House Medical Unit to have my back pain checked. As a matter of routine, the doctor took my blood pressure, which had always been excellent. I was shocked to see it was well over 150 systolic. It had never been an issue, but at forty-five, suddenly I developed a problem that had long plagued my dad. Medication controls my blood pressure well, and regular exercise helps, but the stress of the NSA job definitely exacerbated the challenge.

  She kept slapping the table and yelling in Portuguese. How could the U.S. have eavesdropped on my personal calls?

  For what felt like an eternity, Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff berated President Obama over allegations that the U.S. had tapped her personal phones. While the Brazilian foreign minister translated, I sat with the president at a small table in a quiet corner on the grounds of a Russian palace in St. Petersburg, where we were meeting for the 2013 G20 Summit. The hotter Dilma got, the cooler Obama became. He listened quietly at first, but I could tell his patience was running out. When it did, he interceded in a calm, low voice to explain antiseptically that he had not been aware of the reported eavesdropping. He had not directed the tapping of any friendly foreign leader’s phone. Such surveillance would not continue. The U.S. and Brazil should address this challenge to the valued bilateral relationship in a measured and rational manner.